President Trump gave the go-ahead to Attorney General William Barr Thursday to investigate US intelligence agencies over the origins of the Russia-Trump collusion probe during the 2016 race for the White House.

“President Donald Trump on Thursday granted Attorney General William Barr new powers to review and potentially release classified information related to the origins of the Russia investigation, a move aimed at accelerating Barr’s inquiry into whether U.S. officials improperly surveilled Trump’s 2016 campaign,” reports the Associated Press.

“Trump directed the intelligence community to ‘quickly and fully cooperate’ with Barr’s probe. The directive marked an escalation in Trump’s efforts to ‘investigate the investigators,’ as he continues to try to undermine the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe amid mounting Democratic calls for impeachment proceedings,” adds the article.

Barr’s new mission comes days after he announced the appointment of a US attorney to investigate the dubious origins of the government’s surveillance of Trump campaign associates.

Attorney General William Barr questioned the DOJ’s use of the infamous ‘Steele Dossier’ to obtain FISA warrants against the Trump campaign this week; saying the document has a “number of clear mistakes.”

“It’s a very unusual situation to have opposition research like that, especially one that on its face had a number of clear mistakes and a somewhat jejune analysis,” Barr told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer.

“And to use that to conduct counterintelligence against an American political campaign is a strange — would be strange development,” he added.

The FBI’s use of the now-debunked Dossier to surveil Trump campaign insiders is the subject of the Attorney General’s latest investigation; appointing a US prosecutor to “get to the bottom” of what occurred ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

“Fox News reported on Monday that Attorney General Bill Barr had assigned John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to conduct the inquiry into alleged misconduct and alleged improper government surveillance on the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election, as well as whether Democrats were the ones who improperly colluded with foreign actors,” reports Fox News.

“I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted in the summer of 2016,” Barr testified on April 9.

“The FBI’s July 2016 counterintelligence investigation was opened by former senior agent Peter Strzok. Former FBI counsel Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was romantically involved, revealed during a closed-door congressional interview that the FBI ‘knew so little’ about whether allegations against the Trump campaign were ‘true or not true,’ at the time that they opened the probe, noting that they had just ‘a paucity of evidence because we are just starting down the path’ of vetting the allegations,” adds the report.